On Sat, Apr 08, 2000 at 03:20:12PM -0500, David Starner <dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu> was heard to say:
> A rising problem I see in Debian is the excess i18n data that
> every system has and the bad partitioning of it.
[snip]
> Sort of the cross between these two idea (3) has been used, i.e.
> foo-lang type packages. This definetly encourages package prolification
> and is very bad if done for every 2k message file.
Another alternative is the creation of "package components". These would be
"lightweight" packages -- straight .tar.gz files which could be optionally
installed simultaneously with another package. They would share control
infomation and scripts with the packages they extend, and just provide pure
data.
There are two possible ways to represent these, and I think it should be
possible to allow both: either as extra members of the .deb archive, or as
separate .tar.gzs. For the first case, we might call them
"<componentname>.tar.gz" (obvious problems here if <componentname>==tar;
perhaps "<componentname>.component.tar.gz"?); for the second, maybe something
like: "foopkg_ver_i386_component.tar.gz". Even if separately installable, they
wouldn't be displayed in the main package selection screen; they'd be grouped
with the parent package.
The control files would have to be changed a little to handle this; perhaps
a 'components' file containing a list of components:
Component: de
Description: German-language files for foopkg
Component: icons
Description: Graphical icons for foopkg
In addition, it should be possible to select similarly-named components from
all packages; for example, "Depends: *.de".
This is obviously not a perfect way to do things either, though..
Daniel
--
"...drums...drums in the deep!"
J. R. R. Tolkien